Thousands watched as Bon Jovi, Alicia Keys and Enrique Iglesias lit up New York's Times Square.

The concert, a prelude to the American football season, was also intended to commemorate the victims of 11 September.

Motorists were caught up in huge traffic jams as an area stretching 20 "blocks" was closed off to cars, and heavy security disrupted journeys.

Enrique Iglesias was a crowd-pleaser

'N Sync's Joey Fatone and rapper Eve also performed at the event, partly aimed at helping tourism, with an estimated 100,000 attending.

More than 5,700 police officers were deployed to keep order in Times Square during the monster concert.

Police and other emergency service workers unfurled a giant US flag across the watching crowd.

After performing Bon Jovi were taken by helicopter to Giants Stadium in New Jersey, to play a set at half time in the game between the Giants and the San Francisco 49ers.

City's gratitude

Before the concert, singer Jon Bon Jovi told reporters: "To be here is difficult, cause you don't want to do anything that may seem wrong.

"We're not here to celebrate the fact of 9-11, we're here to just to perhaps offer the gratitude from the city to the world.

"It's so close for me to where I live, we watched the towers burning, we lost friends in it. We are only wanting to pay our respects."

The singer lives in the town of Middleton, New Jersey, which lost 32 people in the attacks, and saw smoke rising from the World Trade Center from a beach near his home.

The group's latest album, Bounce, was inspired in part by the events of last September.